Become a Bitly Power User
If you use twitter you have most likely come across bitly. This service allows you to turn long urls into short ones thereby saving on precious characters in your tweets.
However bitly allows you to do so much more than just shorten links. Using some of the power features can help you with your internet marketing.
View link statistics with a +
If you add a + to the end of any Bitly link it will give you a mountain of statistics. Check this link for an example. The statistics provide details on how many clicks it has received, when those clicks took place, in what countries the clicks came from and if possible the referrer information.
The information available can be mind blowing. Remember I said ANY bitly link. So if your competitors are using bitly you can check how engaged there followers are by just adding a + ;).
Sign-up for Bitly and get Global Stats
If you sign-up for a Bitly account you can link your Twitter ID. This will then allow you to see a global view of all your link statistics. Viewing all your links in a consolidated account helps give you an idea about which links get the most click-thrus and therefore what your followers are interested in.
You can even use the information to see what times of day give you the most click’s and adjust your tweeting pattern to match.
Track your website on Bitly
Once you have signed up to a Bitly account under Settings Advanced you can add your own Tracking Domain. Doing this lets you obtain statistics about your domain bitly. You will be able to see statistics on all links shortened for your domain, even if it was done by someone else!
Use your own custom short domain
Using the power of Bitly you can also use your own custom domain for your shortened links. So instead of bit.ly/9hQElf I have st.cm/9hQElf. I registered the domain st.cm a while ago for this purpose. Then under the advanced settings in my Bitly account I configured st.cm as my custom short domain. This adds some degree of branding to your bitly links. See — How do I set up a custom short domain?
Create a QR Code with Bitly
Yep that’s right Bitly even creates a QR code for your link. All you have to do is add .qrcode to the end of the bitly link to get a copy.
Bitly Enterprise
All of the stuff I talked about above is completely free. There are no charges from bitly for using any of these features. However Bitly do provide an Enterprise version. This allows you greater management of your custom short domains and more in-depth statistics. However with pricing starting at $995 a month it isn’t a cheap option!
Are you a bitly power user? Let us know how you use bitly.
